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Bury the Bad

Baseball is a superstitious game. From Jobu to Dueces Wild and all points in between, Baseball players and fans will try everything to reverse a bit of bad mojo. I have my own personal superstitions when it comes to games. I wear the same hat, I use the same pencil to keep score, and I keep a lucky coin in my left pocket. Is it rational? Meh, probably not. So Auburn is in a rut. A huge rut. Losers of 6 straight SEC games and 8 straight overall. It’s a terrible slide that I’ve documented here. So what can be done? What can, I, as a fan, do to help the bad Auburn baseball mojo.

One thing I thought of was burying the bad. The bad in this case would be the Auburn losses. I came up with an idea (and I’ve heard this being employed elsewhere, but mainly in football):

They were headed to a funeral -- "a funeral for a football," Revis would say later.

Ryan gathered his players around a hole in the ground, just off a grass practice field, and placed a football into the earth -- a game ball from Monday night's embarrassing 45-3 loss to the New England Patriots.

According to some players, Ryan said, "We're burying this game and all that happened Monday night."

With that, the Jets interred the memory of their most lopsided defeat in nearly a quarter century -- or so they hope.

The hole was filled with dirt and covered with patches of sod. They skipped the tombstone. In two days, the Jets went from ripped to R.I.P.

Give Ryan points for creativity. Revis said it might have been Ryan's best motivational tactic ever. Several players said they'd never witnessed anything like it in football.

"I've never seen a coach do that," Revis said. "We all got the point. Usually, in the past, you hear a coach say, 'Let's bury this' and you have to visualize it. When you actually see it, you're like, 'Wow, this is serious.'"

It was an idea that was simple in execution and, hopefully, simple in its results. So I went to Wal-Mart and bought a cheap baseball (because these were cheap and hopefully easily disposable losses) and I wrote each loss to the Auburn baseball team, so far:

Then I drove to Campus today and found a proper place for burial. In this case, right behind the outfield wall. Pretty simple, I thought.

A couple of caveats. I didn’t bury it completely. I’m not an idiot. I didn’t want to raise any suspicion with some random guy coming on to campus and burying something underground. I simple put it where it should go and covered it in dirt. If the school moves it, that’s fine. I did my part (I think). Now, if any students want to finish the job, that’s fine. It’s easy to find and I didn’t want to do anything that would alarm the school.

This might seem like something stupid and trivial, but at this point, I think Auburn could use any good mojo they can get. So here’s to Auburn reversing this bad losing streak and refocusing on the rest of the season. Just Make it to Hoover, everything else should fall in to place.